


The Destroyer

by billymorph



Series: Miraculous Shorts [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Light Angst, Miraculous Side Effects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-14
Updated: 2020-03-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:42:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23141893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/billymorph/pseuds/billymorph
Summary: To be social is to be vulnerable, but knowing how to destroy all your friends is a problem only for the Black Cat.
Series: Miraculous Shorts [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663519
Comments: 2
Kudos: 61





	The Destroyer

At first, Adrian figured it was just a facet of being friends since they were little kids. knowing just what age a she stopped wetting the bed, how she got along with her parents, what her favourite bear was named or any number of little factoids added up to an understanding of what made Cholé tick. Being social, being out there interacting with people with all the randomness and awkwardness that entailed, made you vulnerable to people. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. To have a relationship was to trust, was just the way of the world.

Adrian had just never thought it would be so easy. Cholé would have just taken a few words to destroy.

The actual words flickered and changed moment by moment but the knowledge was always there. A sly comment about how Ladybug would detest her as she picked on Sabrina. A reminder at just the right moment that her own mother couldn’t care to remember her name. An announcement to the class that he’d outgrown her. He did his best to ignore the urge, which was not always as easily done as said especially when she got into yet another screaming tantrum.

Nino came next. Cholé lived with her heart on her sleeve, Nino was quite the opposite and so thick skinned he practically carried a shell. When upset he would retreat into his music, riding out the wave which made the moments fleeting. He put his heart into his sets, though, and the right cutting critique delivered at just the wrong time would have seen him dreams crumble around his ears. Adrian once against wrote the feeling off as something that happened between best friends. He was sure Nino probably knew the right words to rile up Adrian about his modelling woes.

The revelations didn’t stop at Nino, though, in fact they started to come thick and fast. Alya had a bundle of insecurities tied up in her Number One Fan persona that would snap given the right remark from Chat Noir. Sabrina’s decade long friendship with Cholé would shatter like glass with a phoney text message. Opening the right box on his Father’s desk would destroy his family. Nathalie, for all her poise and control, could be ended by deleting a single line from her calendar. Marinette with a kiss and a dismissive snort. Strangely, the only person who appeared immune was Lila and that was mostly because the destructive instinct was content to just sit back and watch.

“Urgh, finally free to stretch my legs!” Plagg exclaimed, zipping out of Adrian’s messenger bag the moment the closed the door behind them. The Kwami did a lap of Adrian’s bedroom before performing a swan dive into the mini-fridge

Adrian rolled his eyes and sighed. He dumped his bag in one corner and wandered over to the fridge. For a moment he debated opening it, the smell of cheese took hours to clear, but his resolve crumpled after just a few moments.

“Oh I’ve missed you, friends,” Plagg exclaimed, hugging a wheel of camembert. “Let us never be apart again.”

Adrian rolled his eyes. “Plagg, it’s been six hours.”

“Six hours of hell! How do you survive these photoshoots? I only had to listen to it and I was bored out of my mind.” Plagg pulled a face, and took a bite bigger than his head out of the cheese wheel. “It’s all, ‘now, the camera loves you!’ and ‘now, the camera hates you!’ and ‘now, you love the camera?’. What are they even talking about?”

“Mr Pelletier is… high strung,” Adrian admitted. He also happened to be very easy broken if someone could convince him his love of the month didn’t reciprocate.

Adrian dropped down to the floor, staring pensively into the middle distance.

“Oh no, I know that look. That’s the ‘I’m too pretty for this world’ look.”

Snorting, Adrian rolled his eyes. “I do not have that look.”

“Kid, you’re a model. You always have that look.”

“Do I?” Adrian frowned, he hoped he wasn’t coming across as conceited. It was hard to judge where the line was when you really did have everything.

Plagg groaned, took and swallowed another mouthful of cheese before turned back to him. “It’s a joke. You really are out of it today.”

“Yeah it’s not been great lately…” Adrian drummed his fingers on the carpet for a moment. “Plagg, this is a dumb question but am I a good person?”

A moment of silence passed.

“What?”

“Seriously, because—“

Plagg leapt out of the fridge and pressed a paw against Adrian’s lips. “Okay, I’m just going to stop you there. You are asking me, the avatar of chaos and destruction itself, whether you, a boy who walks around buttercups in the park, is a bad guy? Where do you even get this stuff from!”

“You don’t have to say it like that,” Adrian protested, brushing him away. “It’s just… it’s just…”

“When you figure out a third syllable, let me know.”

Adrian shot him a look. “I keep wanting to destroy—“

“You have!” Plagg spun on a dime, a cheesy grin on his face, and he did a double fist pump. “Yes! Finally! I’ve been waiting months for this. What do you want to destroy first? Because there’s a really loose shelf in the bathroom that has been hanging on by a thread since I got here and it’s taken everything I have not to knock it loose.

“What?” Adrian stared, blinking.

“Oh! Oh! The bookshelves! The bookshelves have got to go. They’re pretty sturdy and you’ll probably need a hammer but the cascade would just be heaven.” Plagg spun in place three times before finally settling on a direction. “I’ll get the tools!”

“Plagg!” Adrain grabbed the Kwami by the scruff of the neck just before he zoomed out of range. “What are you talking about?”

Dangling from Adrian’s fingers, Plagg adopted an aggrieved look. “What are you talking about?” he shot back.

“I was trying to tell you I’ve been getting this flashes. Of how to, you know, destroy… people.”

Plagg squinted at him for a moment, before sudden realisation struck. “Ooooh. Well that figures, I always said you’re too much of a goody-two-shoes.” Shaking his head Plagg pulled himself out of Adrian’s grip and began to drift back towards the fridge.

Adrian waited a beat for the Kwami to continue. Then, when Plagg was silence pressed on the bridge of his nose. “Plagg, do you remember that talk we had about communication?”

“Not really, I wasn’t listening.”

Adrian glared at him, he was ninety percent sure Plagg was just messing with him but he could never tell. “Well, you’re going to have to give me a bit more than that. How does wanting to destroy peoples’ lives make me a good guy?”

Plagg parked himself on the top shelf and shrugged. “Psh. Duh. It means you care. You’re the Black Cat, kid, the epitome of destruction, chaos and misfortune; after moi of course. That kind of magic rubs off after a while, and you don’t really care about things so you’re obviously going to get people.”

For a long moment Adrian could only stare, which gave Plagg the opportunity to start on another wheel of cheese. “This is because I’m Chat Noir?” Adrian pressed, his voice small in the vast room.

“Oh yeah, all the Miraculous bleed over to users eventually,” Plagg explained, shrugging. “Ladybugs create effortlessly, Foxes can bring any story to life, Bees can do a weeks’ work in an afternoon, Turtles are so tough even death leaves them alone—“ He snorted. “—heh, one of these days Nooroo will rub off on Hawkmoth enough to give him a little empathy.”

“And black cats destroy,” Adrian completed, staring at his hand. For a moment he could almost feel the telltale crackle of a Cataclysm ready to spring.

Plagg shot him a look. “Please don’t go all ‘woe is me’ on me. You already wear black and eyeliner, you do not need to get any more visigoth.”

“It’s just goth, Plagg.” Adrian replied, cracking a smile.

“Whatever.” Plagg swallowed another mouthful of cheese.

“It’s just… heavy.” He spun the Miraculous on his finger. “Having that much power. Being able to do that much damage to people. It feels wrong.”

Plagg rolled his eyes. “Adrian,” he said, fixing Adrian with a serious look. “Don’t get caught up on right and wrong. Everyone loves creation but without destruction things would never end. People fear death, and loss, and all that junk but if things truly lasted like they want then sick people would stay sick forever, loss would never stop hurting and the dark times would last forever. Don’t think that just because you provide an end means that you’re the bad guy. Sometimes its just what is needed.”

“Huh…” Adrian blinked. “I think that’s the most serious I’ve ever heard you.”

Plagg snorted. “Yeah.” His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he leapt into the air, hovering between Adrian’s eyes. “What did you do to this cheese?” Plagg demanded, waving a crumb in Andrian’s face.

“Nothing!” Adrian protested, batting him away. “What would I even put in it? I’m not sure you even have a stomach.”

“I’ll have you know I have a bottomless pit,” Plagg corrected him, turning up his nose and sounding alarmingly proud of that fact. “But I guess I’ll have to trust you.” He threw the lump of cheese into the air and caught it in his mouth as it feel.

“I’m flattered.” Adrian rolled his eyes. “And… glad you have my back, buddy.”

“Always.”

“Though, I wouldn’t say no to that Bee power, being able to do a load of work in an afternoon sounds sweet.”

Plagg scoffed. “You’d also have to wear black and yellow leggings.”

“I take it back, I take it back!”


End file.
